"If one partner protects their creativity and rest and ambition or joy because the other partner is holding the system together, that joy is being heavily subsidized," she explains. "Not by money, but by someone else's nervous system."
Sibling estrangement is not just about not talking to your brother or sister. It has much broader ramifications, as sibling rejection can profoundly shape an individual's personality and their roles in the family. The estranged may lose the opportunity to be a sibling, in-law, aunt or uncle, and even son or daughter, as estrangement often metastasizes and family members choose sides. These shifting alliances may contribute to greater alienation.
When you're the one who organizes the family vacation, calls the plumber for your parents, and coordinates every Mother's Day gift, it's easy to feel resentful that nobody else is stepping up to help. Often, the eldest daughter is the one who notices-and in noticing, begins to believe she's responsible. Family researchers have long described this as intergenerational vigilance (Miller-Ott et al., 2017), a sense of watchfulness passed down through gendered expectations.
I go into Christmas every year with low expectations for my husband's side of the family. They are notoriously bad gift givers, so I just go into it with the knowledge that the gifts don't matter, it's about our time together as a family.
We had taken every precaution we could to avoid it. I have MS, which can react in unpredictable ways to viral exposures. My husband knows this very well, which is why I'm perplexed and furious that he thought it better to stay on the good side of our son by not allowing me to decide for myself whether I wanted to walk into a potentially deadly situation.
When she asked us where we were going, I panicked, and I told her we were invited to go skiing with friends at their chalet. (We do not know anyone with a chalet.) My dad called to tell me my mother was more upset than she let on and asked if we could "visit that damn chalet" some other time.
When I was eight years old, I was living in Dubai and desperate to experience a western Christmas. My family are Muslim, and Christmas was something we'd never celebrated but after consuming countless festive Hallmark movies, I was hooked on the dream of having turkey, tinsel and, most importantly, presents. I also had an enormous crush on Macaulay Culkin, and thought if I could experience Christmas for myself it would somehow bring me closer to him.
It's about a five-hour drive from Akron to South Bend. Things get a little tricky on the outskirts of Cleveland, but after that you just stick to I-80. I stopped for gas and a Subway sandwich and reached my brother's apartment around two in the afternoon. He lived in an old hotel, which had been dolled up and turned into residential units.
My grandmother strove for perfection, convinced that it was an attainable goal if only you worked hard enough. This meant eating less to lose weight. Food deprivation became a family bonding activity when my grandmother was on a diet. Diets lasted decades. We had marathon cleaning weekends while friends went to the mall. Play clothes were swapped out for school clothes for our rare trips to Burger King.
Everybody knows that parties are for fun and celebration. Winter holiday parties are definitely different than everyday festivities. More often than not, even with detailed plans and extra help, these holiday celebrations can be stressful and exhausting. Almost all celebrations start by making a list and then inviting your chosen guests who will be asked to respond yes or no to your invitation.
Oh, but I'm going on and on about myself. Come in, right this instant! You'll have to forgive the paltry decorations around the house. We had to cut back on some of the frivolities this year. Everything is just so expensive now! Did you know that we couldn't even afford poinsettias for the entryway? Oh I fought Grayham on it, I promise you. I told him, "Darling, what's Christmas without poinsettias?" But he held firm.
Ten years ago, I connected with Christi, a daughter I fathered with a woman I was in a relationship with for a short time decades ago. We split before I knew my girlfriend was pregnant. She didn't tell me until after the baby was born. By that time, she was married to a man Christi knew as her dad. Christi no longer acknowledges him as her father.
I broke off my engagement to my beloved fiancé, "Tristan," in November. Everyone else in my family loves him. I'm pretty sure some of my aunts and uncles love him more than they love me. I told my closest people personally and sent out formal cancellations to everyone else who got a save-the-date. But I haven't seen extended family or childhood friends since I did this, and I will be going home for Christmas. I'm worried everyone's going to be really invasive and weird, especially because I'm embarrassed about the final straw that made me end it. I absolutely should have seen this earlier.
Christmas dinner? At home or in a restaurant? It's at this juncture of the year, with Christmas dinner hurtling towards us, that you may well find yourself muttering: Well, we could always go out! Who could blame any home cook for wanting to shove this great burden on to someone else's back, especially since every culinary TV show, magazine article and advertising break since mid-November has hammered home what a colossal faff Christmas dinner actually is.
I get it. However, she continues to be disrespectful to me and has made him choose sides in disagreements. I've always tried to be neutral in situations. We all live together, but Amber and I just don't get along. She doesn't respect her father at all. When I have tried to make him realize it or support him when she's being unruly, I am turned into the bad guy.
It's a well-known fact that women are the primary makers of holiday magic. We're the ones who do the decorating, we're the ones wrapping the gifts, we're the ones making the cookies - we've got a vision, you know? But does being in charge of holiday magic mean we should also buy our own Christmas presents? One mom on the Reddit community Mommit took to the app to ask if she's the only mom buying herself Christmas gifts, and the responses really ran the gamut.
Then she asked a childhood friend, Ping Chong, to hold onto her records, including the death certificate of her husband, who had died of cancer three years earlier. Chong, reluctant to confront the prospect of her dear friend's death, refused at first. But Hang, who never shouted, pounded the table with a fist weakened by chemotherapy and yelled at Chong to take her request seriously.
The manager curtly pointed out that everyone there had specifically asked to work that day, and I realized that most of the employees either needed the paycheck (hourly workers aren't typically paid for national holidays if they don't work) or wanted to escape their various home situations. I left the coffee shop thoroughly embarrassed about my entitled assumption that everyone would want the day off and should be given the day off without having a say in the matter.
My aunt turned 80 last weekend, and to celebrate, a bunch of us flew out to the West Coast to visit her. While planning the trip, I realized that where we were staying was just a short train ride from a fairly popular gay bathhouse I'd been curious about for a while. I figured the day after the party would be the perfect time to finally check it out.
Like white lights versus colored lights, The Family Stone has become a polarizing Christmas icon to debate. The 2005 film with an all-star ensemble cast is either deeply loved by someone you know or considered an unhinged, terrible movie by somebody else you know. But I'm here to tell you: It can be both. Because yes, I am well aware that The Family Stone is a truly wild movie, but I love it deeply -
It is true that sometimes the black sheep is indeed different or problematic by anyone's standards (sometimes the result of a hidden mental illness). Or she may be a sociopath who violates the family's boundaries and care, so that the family has to exclude her to rightfully protect themselves. But surprisingly, very seldom is either of these scenarios actually the case.
If you've ever hit a moment on day three or four of a family visit when everything suddenly feels like too much, you're not alone. Most of us have a threshold, and once we hit it, even small interactions can feel overwhelming. Just know that's not a personal failure ― it's actually a common psychological response. And if you pay attention to the subtle signs that you're nearing your limit, you can avoid a tense blowup or unnecessary burnout.
"I'm either a widower or a divorcé," Culkin explained (via Variety). "I'm raising a kid and all that stuff. I'm working really hard and I'm not really paying enough attention and the kid is kind of getting miffed at me and then I get locked out. [Kevin's son] won't let me in... and he's the one setting traps for me."
